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Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

finance.yahoo.com

51–60 of 87 posts

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#51

It's funny when these executives, on one side, will happily lay people off, implement attrition policies, or engage in morally-questionable behaviors, all with the purpose of maximize profits, while on the other hand blame the employees that they don't care about the company, and are only in it for the money. It's a thinly veiled way of saying "only I am allowed to play the game as the ruthless capitalist".

I once worked as a contractor at a startup whose CEO had little trophies on display in a wall case showing off funding rounds for previous startups. There were like 3 employees and 15 contractors, and he had one of the contractors give a speech about believing in the mission or whatever. It was laughable. I was only there a couple months and found out later they got bought out by the largest company in the space. He probably bought a few more tacky red Ferraris after that.

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#52
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who thinks people work for anything other than money is delusional. Anyone who works for "the mission" is an idiot - no company or billionaire running a company cares about you. They will let you go in a heart beat.

I disagree, while money is a really important factor, that's not the final. Personally, I've changed to lower paid job to work on something i am more interested in.

I agree. We all make these kinds of trade-offs sometimes. We trade some amount of money for peace of mind, more interesting work, better colleagues, a healthier environment, and so on.

But I never buy the "mission" story, or the "we’re a family" line. We’re not a family, and I’m not on a mission.

I’m fine with the word "vision." I’ll be part of your vision if I find it interesting or if I believe in it too. But I’m not on a mission to achieve it.

To me, "mission" implies sacrifice and renunciation - whether that means sacrificing your lifestyle, your time, or your family. I’m not doing that.

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#53
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m aware of this (consciously) but I would really do my job if it was unpaid, in fact: many do (and did) in the form of side projects and volunteering and FOSS. I was always weirded out by the “only in IT for the money” crowd, which is a lot more than the people in it for passion these days it seems, and I might be an extreme case, but consider that while I run an IRC community- I do not write open source software.

I do a ton of side projects that personally interest me. I’m mainlining hard technical problems with zero need for permissions or waiting on bureaucracy or jira tickets. If a decision needs to be made, I don’t have to wait until next week when all of the “stakeholders” are available to talk about it. I figure it out myself. If my day job was a side project I wouldn’t work on it at all.

to be fair with you, I have a huge intolerance to that bureaucracy, likely in part due to my passion.

I think it would genuinely be the same for me.

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#55
Be careful what you wish for. Ideological employees exist, and they might even work for less. But that doesn’t mean they will always agree with Dario’s ideology. This is something Google has found out.

And when those ideological people start making noises about the ways they disagree with the company, he might miss the more mercenary employees.

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#56
post #38
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who thinks people work for anything other than money is delusional. Anyone who works for "the mission" is an idiot - no company or billionaire running a company cares about you. They will let you go in a heart beat.

I agree with you mostly, and it’s important for everyone to understand. With that said, not everyone maximizes for only money.

Yup, I agree. I’m just clarifying what I meant by my original comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206654

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#57
I'm sorry. Companies are not charities or families but like sports teams. We come together for a limited objective, where the company meets its objectives and I get paid for my time.

I was laid off last year along with many of my colleagues, some time before the layoff the group director had an impromptu meeting and declared we are working for the good of the world and that we should all feel aligned with this message to serve humanity - "Our mission is to empower every person and every individual organisation on the planet to achieve more".

No your mission is to pump the stock and return value to shareholder. My mission is to help you do it and get paid for my time.

And it turns out more often that not, that to serve humanity is a cookbook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_(The_Twilight_Zon...

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#58

It's hard to think notions like company loyalty have ever meant something in Silicon Valley. Amodei himself would have never subscribed to a "mission" in the entirety of his career, having jumped from Baidu to Google to OpenAI and finally backstabbing them to form their own company. It's all just a performance; inevitably the same thing is going to happen to Anthropic too.

He left OpenAI because he didn't think sama was being faithful to the mission. https://www.openaifiles.org/

Like I said, all a performance. Just needed a "positive" reason for drama.

Re: Anthropic CEO reportedly worried new hires only care about money

#59
post #6

Here's an idea: instead of paying your employees $800k, how about you cut their pay to $80k. See how many of them are truly in it for the mission.

"Ask not what your Company can do for you —ask what you can do for your Company". - Anthropic CEO.

Maybe more like "Ask not what AGI can do for you -- ask what you can do for AGI." ;-)
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